FRIDAY BOMBSHELL NUGGET: The NFL’s retirement board, which is an entity independent of the league, awarded benefits to former players because football equals brain injuries while the NFL itself was engaged in firm denials that there is anything harmful about their sport so shut up already and grab some nachos. This development alone won’t likely have sweeping effects, but it’s one more thing detractors of the game – and possibly those former players currently suing the league – can point to saying that the NFL purposefully obscured the truth about the effects of its game.

The NFL’s retirement board awarded disability payments to at least three former players after concluding that football caused their crippling brain injuries — even as the league’s top medical experts for years consistently denied any link between the sport and long-term brain damage.

The board paid at least $2 million in disability benefits to the players in the late 1990s and 2000s, documents obtained in a joint investigation by ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” and FRONTLINE show. The approvals were outlined in previously unpublished documents and medical records related to the 1999 disability claim of Hall of Fame center Mike Webster.

So, good that these few players were actually given the benefits that they should have gotten, I guess. Otherwise, the finding is likely to lead to more bad things being written about football. Not entirely unwarranted. Still, get ready for more baseball fans to resume lecturing us that football is amoral soon.